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| The Turbo Newbie Trilogy : Part 3a - The Calm Before the Swarm | | | Author: | | | IP: | bc-pgr-aXXXX | | Date: | 07/23/00 12:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 1, Max: 8, Min: 8
Lifetime Rating for RhinoAssUgly: 7.8333 |  | Find "The Turbo Newbie Trilogy : Part 1" here.
Read "The Turbo Newbie Trilogy : Part 2 - Glory Daze" here.
 Part 3a - The Calm Before the SwarmYes, that's right, Part 3"a". Swing low sweet chariots, 'cause this may very well be the only trilogy in existance with four parts. I found myself, in all my sloppy wisdom, rewriting the entire schwack that was supposed to be Part 3 (I'd originally told Cynical Magician the whole story was finished, and I stick by that. It WAS ...) I appologize in advance to the "ThisThing's 2DamnShortYouRatBastard" crowd. I'm being harassed to release something, and I do sincerely believe that the whole Part 3 as one would be too long a marathon. Pardon my verbal diarrhea. Enjoy. - RAU
P.S. So I double posted. Love me.
The sounds of the surrounding battle were muted by the ringing in his ears, like an icepick jammed through both eyes. Screams, screeches, C-14s, artillery, Styles' shouting, the vacated SCV careening headlong off the far cliff; all these were lost to the high pitched whine searing between Bacco’s temples. Even the twistedly excited hissing of the zergling roosted upon his back fell soundless to deaf ears.
With a savage grin on it’s dripping incisors, the ling again smashed a wickedly sharp bone scythe against Bacco’s helmet, viciously jolting his head and cracking the visor. The vision in his right eye darkened, narrowing to a blurry dot. Another blow. Bacco’s entire left side tingled with a million tiny needles.
Then, just as suddenly, the nightmare weighing him down was gone.
Stumbling towards the bunker in a near blind panic, Styles refused to look back. He knew they were coming, and they were fast. Much faster than he’d ever be. Glancing behind might very well loose him the split second he needed to reach safety.
“Ass! Down!”
Styles knew when he was being addressed. Diving, he grunted with the impact of the graceless, sandy face plant. Instantly, impaler fire split the air above, ricocheting off the exoskeletons of the insect-like aliens bounding at his heels. At first unfazed, the zerglings kept coming, shrieking but frighteningly determined, appearing as if they’d actually reach the huddled form of the terrified man despite their shredded limbs. With a final shudder of effort, however, the pair spilled to a rolling, dusty heap just short of their victim, their shuddering bodies torn and bloodied.
The ling he’d belted off Bacco’s back with the butt of his gun thrashed, it’s head collapsed. Sneering, Mooley ended it with two rapid bursts.
From the bunker, the off key clatter of two weapons in unison. Then. Nothing.
An odd silence fell.
“No more!” Williams blurted from inside, breaking the still. “We got ‘em all!”
“The tank’s not firing, goddammit.” Bickerson muttered sternly.
“Well ... at least the mutes didn’t come back.”
“Yet.”
Bacco groaned as he tried to right himself, flopping back to the sand. Slinging both their guns across his back, Mooley leaned to help the struggling marine to his feet. Bacco’s helmet was badly warped and nearly punctured in four places, like a quartet of solid blows from a pickaxe.
“Good thing you scream loud, Dobbs.” Mooley muttered, shouldering most of Bacco’s weight as they quickly limped up the ramp, ducking inside.
Thickly, “I was screaming?”
Over the span of three ragged breaths, things had become eerily peaceful. Styles’ nerves screamed, blood still pumping in his ears. Carefully pushing from the desert floor, as if any sudden movement on his part would bring hell, Styles slowly turned full circle. The plateau above the Zerg colony was carnage. Bodies of nearly two dozen lings scattered the dunes, many of them broken and spread to pieces. Smoke lazily drifted from a handful of blasted holes, black fumes billowing from the still crackling remains of both SCVs, one out of sight, strewn down the cliffside. The tower lay fallen, broken across the sands, the top portion having disappeared over the ridge to where it no doubt remained, destroyed on the pulsating creep below. Now scarred and beaten, yet intact, the bunker awaited victorious; atop it the contorted mutalisk corpse baking in the wasteland sun, the Arclite looming and dormant just beyond.
Styles broke into a run.
Placing the other man’s C-14 alongside as he lowered him to sitting, Mooley hunkered down. “Help me get his helmet off, Biks. This can’t be healthy.”
“I’ve got two and a half left.” Williams said, checking his reserves worriedly. “Do you think they’ll send another wave?”
Bickerson didn’t look up as he worked Bacco’s helmet free. “Yes.”
From outside, Styles was ecstatic, whooping as he came. “Now THAT was something else!” Boots thumping up the ramp, the SCV jockey burst in just as the comm crackled to
life for the first time since the shooting started, cutting short his celebration. Graves sounded as if his headache was ‘this big’.
“Why isn’t that tank firing? I can’t reach the pilot.”
“Prolly ‘cause he’s dead, sir.” Mooley grumbled, slightly annoyed.
“Is the artillery operational?”
“More than likely, sir.” Bickerson answered offhand, squinting at the swollen lumps forming along the back and sides Bacco’s head, blood trickling down the nape of his neck. “We haven’t really had time to put her up on blocks, though, so I could be way fuckin’ wrong.”
Five people packed in a steaming Terran bunker made for a chronic lack of patience.
Graves ignored him. Instead, he went on matter-a factly. “The barrage must continue. We’re en route with a frontal assault. Graves out.”
“Fuck you, Shirly.” Bacco muttered under his breath, wincing. The commander didn’t hear.
Finally falling into the conversation, face slack, hair plastered to his scalp by sweaty hat-head, Styles looked like a drown rat. “Continue? What’d he mean by that?”
“Guys!” Williams motioned wildly, pointing, peering through the eastern murder hole. “Three o’clock. Mag ten on that pointy dune with the tall rocks. Caught it out of the corner of my eye, way out there.”
Crouching along side, Mooley tapped the panel on his armguard, zooming his CMC visor magnification to ten times the normal. Scanning Williams’ dune, following his verbal
direction, the marine saw what he was meant to see. Crossing the sandy hill, carefully attempting to slither undetected amongst the jagged shadows of the jutting rock
formation, the thing’s eyes betrayed it’s presence. Two ovals of redish glow, it’s serpentine body writhing behind, invisible amid the inky shade unless one knew where to look.
Mooley sounded bleak as he followed the creature’s progress. “Defiler.”
“What?” Styles went pale.
Christ. The dead mutalisk stunk like rotten everything.
Bacco flinched as he swayed to his feet on Bickerson’s arm. The pain was bearable but persistent, his head thudding like a sadistic, mallet wielding imp had a mad on with the
inside of his forehead. Grunting, he leaned against the sheet metal wall with one hand, his head hung low. Dizziness was temporary. Sucking back a deep breath, tasting copper, he spit a solid stream through his teeth. It was crimson. He needed some chew. “Who can work that Arclite?” he asked finally, lifting his eyes to examine those present.
“I’ve run the sim a few times back at the factory.” Bik replied, shrugging. “Kind of a hobby o’ mine.”
“Feel like the real thing?”
Styles went limp. “What?”
Bickerson grinned, hefting his C-14. “Always.”
HUDS lit up, the female voice chirped; Graves finally highlighting the enemy to the east.
“Gee, thanks.” Mooley murmured, ignoring the blips. The defiler hadn’t moved from its shadow.
For the second time that day, things were down to the bare wire. Graves’ transmission had been blunt, cold, but with good reason. Things were moving fast, the new strategy already set in motion by Zerg persistence. Further instruction to his battered troops atop the cliffs would have been pointless and a waste of precious seconds. Here, just like before, speed was God. The five men of the 23rd Red were a distraction now, a precursor to the frontal assault whether they liked it or not. Victims of circumstance. Trapped.
And so it was.
The defiler slid into sunlight.
All things at once.
Williams hollered, falling back from the opening.
Mooley stood, killing the magnification as he shrugged off his gun.
Bickerson bolted through the door, pounding down the ramp toward the tank.
Bacco blinked through his haze.
Styles balled meager hands into meager fists.
And then it came, the dark swarm, rushing, a cloud of locust sent to blind and smother all things useless. And again, like before, the zerglings came with it.
Turmoil. It was there, too sudden to witness, to swift to avoid, the hundreds upon thousands of tiny things boiling together, slapping against skin and metal, alive yet so thick they seemed a single entity. Each a creature of itself, all swarming as one over the bunker, through the murder holes, the open door, clicking, snapping, buzzing, a surging wave of something, strangely altered grasshoppers, each different yet the same, filling the bunker as sure as a cup with water. From somewhere within, all around, the screeches of Zerg. Hisses, knowing, the monsters unseen but seeing, unaffected by the shifting, flowing, living darkness.
Inside, where once was safe, the men were lost.
Under the sun, plunging through the sands just short of the Arclite, the dark swarm exploded out and over Bickerson like a cresting wave. Head bent and legs pumping, his combat suit heavy and awkward for the first time since bootcamp, he broke from the cloud just as he found himself surrounded, the edge of the swarm, a wall of churning mass, towering behind. He fell hard against the artillery, throwing himself up and onto the tread with momentum on his side.
The interior of a siege tank was a narrow one.
Standing atop, Bickerson began to shed his CMC with controlled quickness, the whole while watching the massive, humming cloud for any sign of the others. He had to attract the Zerg attentions away from the bunker and the marines inside. Fast.
That meant bringing down the hammer on the heart of the hive.To Be Continued ...(again)
A Sloppy Smear of Goodness07.22.00 |
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